On October 31, the European Union Copyright Directive took effect in the UK through implementing legislation called the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003. In VNUNet.com, Dinah Greek analyzes how the new law will affect research. Excerpt: "It sets out new rules to protect digital rights management by bringing in draconian measures to protect anti-copying technologies. Now it is illegal to break copyright mechanisms and offenders could face unlimited fines and jail even if carrying out this task for legitimate reasons such as research. The directive has the potential to affect research into a number of technology areas. For example, an academic researcher studying cryptography methods would be unable to publish their findings if they discovered flaws in a commercially available product, if it intended to break the anti-copyright measures....Additionally, this has altered what researchers can legitimately use for publication and teaching. The older provisions on fair dealing [called "fair use" in the US] allowed researchers to make use of copyrighted material, in certain circumstances, for purposes of research or private study. Now it is likely that companies, teachers and researchers will have to obtain a licence to copy protected material." More coverage.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/09/2003 12:18:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
